Which user-agent strings identify FacebookExternalHit?

The following user-agent strings identify FacebookExternalHit: facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php).

Does FacebookExternalHit respect robots.txt rules?

According to official documentation, FacebookExternalHit does not respect robots.txt rules.

How do I block or allow FacebookExternalHit in robots.txt?

You can control FacebookExternalHit access using robots.txt rules. See the blocking snippet on this page for specific directives.

How can I verify FacebookExternalHit traffic in server logs?

You can verify FacebookExternalHit requests by checking your server access logs for the documented user-agent strings. For accurate verification, correlate user-agent patterns with IP ranges or verification methods provided by Meta.

What is FacebookExternalHit?

Direct Answer: Facebook External Hit crawler is a web crawler that scrapes content from the web to improve Facebook's services.

Operator: Meta Purpose: Unknown

User-Agent Identification

The following user-agent strings identify FacebookExternalHit in your server logs:

facebookexternalhit/1.1 (+http://www.facebook.com/externalhit_uatext.php)

robots.txt Rules for FacebookExternalHit

Respects robots.txt: No

Use the following robots.txt rules to control FacebookExternalHit access:

# Block FacebookExternalHit
User-agent: facebookexternalhit
Disallow: /

# Allow FacebookExternalHit
User-agent: facebookexternalhit
Allow: /

Crawl Behavior

Request Pattern: Not Documented

Official Documentation Quotes

""

Source: Official Documentation

Log Verification

To verify FacebookExternalHit traffic in your server logs:

Search access logs for the user-agent strings listed above
Check if the IP addresses match documented ranges (if provided by Meta)
Verify the crawl pattern matches documented behavior
Use reverse DNS lookup for additional verification if available

Note: Observed behavior in production environments may differ from official documentation. Log-based monitoring provides the only reliable verification of actual bot behavior.

Missing Information

The following information is not officially documented for FacebookExternalHit:

crawl rate
scraping scope

Official Documentation

View Official FacebookExternalHit Documentation →

Information extracted on February 2, 2026 from official sources. Content generated with AI assistance.